Thursday, November 29, 2007

So we have dates finalized: Jan 5th at Shelter Surf Shop, 2700 Rose Ave, Signal Hill CA 90755 (562-997-0100) Jan 26th at Patagonia, 2185 San Elijo Ave, Cardiff CA 92007 at 6.30Andrew's art show at The Surf Gallery will open on Jan 19 and he'll be there signing and generally loitering, 911 S. Coast Hwy, Laguna Bch CA 92651 (949-576-9155) and we'll have San Francisco slotted in around the 12th, New York in early Feb and maybe a few others as we can fit them. Don't forget on the 25th & 26th the bi-annual Swift Movement fandango will be happening, so you should all come to at least one show and that as well.

Wednesday, November 21, 2007

Plenty to be thankful right now as I just heard from the printer that advances are ready of 'Ether' which means I should have the finisehed book around year end and our planned tour can go ahead for January. Andrew has a show booked at the Surf Gallery in Laguna Beach opening Jan 19, and the weekend after that it's Festivus time. I 'll start posting solid dates and times in the next week, and please come on by the shows. Andrew will be doing what will be an undoubtedly entertaining slide show of his work from the last 20 years, and we'll be showing a new trailer for 'Hydrodynamica'. The book is absolutely epic, a total piece of art. It's expensive, but it's the coolest piece of limited surf art you'll see outside of a hand shaped board. I'm stoked. (Click on the image above for an enlarged taste) Went with RK to see an Alex Kopps art show this past weekend too, and in keeping with the hull vibe of the last few posts we got to meet the legendary Steve Krajewski aka Esteban Bojorquez aka one of the most polished hull riders you'll ever see. Truly nice guy and hell of a storyteller. We wangled an invite to check out both Kirk Putnam and Steve's archives, and a good time was had by all. It's undoubtedly over-obsessive of me, but it's cool to see another thread of surfboard design concepts that have evolved out of the same Simmons concpts of the late 1940s that have inspired the short, wide twinnies and stubs I love so well. Sure, there's plenty of other equally important elements to the boards we see today, but the Simmons thing is strong when you look.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

These two bad boys are 1lb eps, stringerless and shaped by my internet buddy Greg out in Texas. He has a bunch more photos here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/16998046@N06/ There's some great shots of the full s-deck business he has going on at that site. The 'Leaf' is 6'4 and 21" wide, the stub is 6'0" and 22.5- Michael Peterson would know what to do with this particular board. What I think is great about them is he plans to make them both quads which seems like a fine idea. Here's the point where I make all the hull guys angry- My issue with what is traditionally considered a 'hull' -pinched rails, s-deck, single big flex fin- is simply that they don't seem to turn very well. No disrespect meant to the boards at all, I think they're amazing for what they were designed to do, which is go really fast and give the rider a very distinctive feel for how the board is riding. I love the single mindedness and purity of design that Liddle, Steve K, Hilbers, Putnam et al have put into these things. The boards are designed to fly down the line at the right hand pointbreaks that abound in N. Los Angeles county, and fly they do. I however, like turning, and if a surfer as talented as Jimmy Gamboa can't hack a decent cutback on one of these things then I have no hope. The usual complaints about hulls don't bother me much though- mostly I hear people say they're squirrelly as hell and they don't work so well on the backhand or in a beach break. Fine, it's good that the experience comes only after learning to finesse the board- that's called aquiring skill. As for the backhand problem, then ride the thing on your forehand in pointbreaks. It's awesome that we can have boards as finetuned to certain conditions as that. Still, refinement contnues- the Casper family I've had in the lasty few posts have definite elements of the hull, and here's Greg's smaller, flexy hull style boards which, with the quad set up, may turn like a teenager's shortboard. This is the stuff that keeps me stoked about surfboards.

Sunday, November 11, 2007

This is the end result of one particular train of design thought that runs through some of the most functional if non 'mainstream' surfboards of the last 50 years. Richard Kenvin had made some 6' and smaller versions of the classic 9' Simmons board (go to Hydrodynamica.com if haven't done so already- that's the big Simmons on the homepage and the little Casper appears toward the end of the clip) which despite being really odd looking, surf incredibly well. A stumpy wide s-deck, twin keels way back on a 19" wide tail and you have a high speed small wave killer for the under head high stuff. The thing paddles like a longboard as it's carved from EPS by the mighty Joe Bauguess, yet when you pop up it's like riding a skateboard and it's blazingly fast. The sort of thing that can make your surfing experience entirely new and fun again. Being the mad genius types they are, RK & Joe took it another step and here's this thing. Hull and Fish melded? Sort of, but sort of it's own thing. EPS, hand foiled keels and I'm thinking about 5'6" personally, but as they're all custom I guess you can do whatever you want with it.

Sunday, November 04, 2007

Very odd. I've been fumbling to make this blog thing a bit more of a priority and follow through on the orginal intention (a not too subtle way to peddle our merch and to put the creative output of friends out there), and not one but 2 friends tell me they stumbled on it. Just the push I needed, so here we go. My friend Andy said more board pics is the ticket and I think I agree, so here's another one of Dain's. It's a hull, Aussie style. 5'11" and a big flex fin for the classic down the line runner and the start of a bit of a theme. Please note I finally got it together to put some other blog links over there. Probably you've seen them but if not take a look, they're all favourites of mine. Surf In Oregon is one of the greats I believe, and the one that made me think this was a good idea to try. Sissy and Pushing are classics of the genre, and I think Surferbrat has some of the best photography out there. Swallowtail, Fish Bros and Eli are all just into the same stuff I like and pure eye candy board wise. I even managed to get in the water and on a Saturday no less. Crowded as hell at Porto so being the grumpy old man I am I went a bit north and got bounced around by high tide dumpers all on my lonesome. I've said it before but here it is again- the acceleration that Spitfire fin gives you is really, really fun. I made around a couple of sections I didn't think I'd beat, and my one right was worth the whole foggy morning despite being tossed by the reflecting wave coming back from the shore.